Hacking my painting skills

It’s time to distill some hobby moonshine by breaking down the successes and failures of my previous projects.

Tempest Hawks Primaris Marines

Pros:

• Yellow helmets and green lenses are very eye catching close up.
• The white areas stand out due to the darker resesses in the panel lining.
• Breaking up the backpack with the red helped to keep the illusion of the two colour paint scheme.
• The plasma effect is solid.

Cons:

• I estimate the layering, panel lining, highlights and freehand took 3 – 4 hours per model. 
• A quick test of both colour schemes on Instagram showed I gained more likes for a 1-hour-and-done Iron Warrior.
• The quartered scheme is obscured on the battlefield.
• The squad marking transfers in all Space Marine boxes are white, if I’d inverted my colour scheme I could have transfers rather than painting the symbol on.
•  Textured paints are great at quickly basing models that would otherwise require lots of PVA glue and paint but require lots of extra layers when you need to cover a large area.

Blanchitsu Stormcast Eternals

Pros:

• Being held accountable and getting a reward (however small) ensured I actually completed the project in the 3-month time span.
• Spraying Leadbelcher and then using a wash cut with Lahmian Medium worked great in getting a nice metal finish.
• Small stones glued to the bases helped them stand out.
• Pigment rubbed into their armour and on their bases made the models stand out for little work.

Cons:

• The livery needed an extra colour (possibly gold) to make it really pop.
• Applying a single coloured pigment over a textured base didn’t work as expected. It needs more layers to work correctly.
• I still don’t play Age of Sigmar and therefore these models are currently sitting in a box unused.

Sisters of Silence

Pros:

• Painting the heads separately worked great.
• The metal colour came out excellently by just tweaking my original formula and adding purple.
• Drybrushing the fur part of the cloaks ended up with a really nice effect for little work.

Cons:

• I needed to paint the flamers in a different colour as they blend into the miniature when viewed from the front.
• I’m unlikely to ever use these in a game.
• My bases now look very mundane in comparison to the Stormcast Eternals.

Conclusions:

• Get a usable army worked out on paper first.
• Test the colour scheme on spare models.
• Get feedback from Instagram / Reddit / CMON before moving on.
• Put models together in sub-assemblies for ease of painting.
• Apply the base colour with spray cans or an airbrush.
• Use transfers as much as possible to add details.
• Apply shading with ninja washes or pigments to save chunks of time.
• Focus all time-consuming pin washes and edge highlighting only on areas that are going to stand out.
• Airbrush basic gradients onto large flat surfaces to save even more time.
• Assemble the bases separately to avoid getting the materials on the miniatures.

The bonus after-credits bit they do in Marvel movies…

Thanks to the Bolter and Chainsword’s Space Marines Painter here and a list of hex codes for all the Citadel Paints here I knocked up a quick prototype of a simple colour scheme that matches my specifications.

Watch this space…

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